Friday, March 5, 2010

The Political Calculus in NC

For Democrats in North Carolina this year the problem is not so much the voters turning against them, as whether they'll be able to get their folks out to the polls to the same extent fired up Republicans can this year.

Our last statewide poll found only 6% of people who supported Barack Obama for President planning to vote Republican for the legislature. That's not a particularly large number, and it's basically indistinguishable from the 4% of McCain supporters who say they're going to vote Democratic this year.

There aren't enough one time Democratic voters abandoning ship to allow Republicans to take the legislature this year. If the folks who turn out this November mirror the folks who turned out in November 2008 there's little doubt Marc Basnight and Joe Hackney will still be running their chambers a year from now.

The problem for Democrats- as it was in the recent elections in Massachusetts and particularly Virginia- is that Republican voters are a lot more excited about coming out to vote this year. Where 11% more Democrats than Republicans voted in North Carolina in 2008, at this point only 6% more Democrats than Republicans are planning to vote in 2010. That may not seem like a huge change but it's certainly enough to flip a lot of close races.

The vast majority of people who supported Democratic candidates in 2008 will do so this year, but the party will have to figure out how to convince its comparatively disengaged voters to get out to the polls. Republicans could end up having a big year in the state not so much because 2008 Democratic voters turn away from the party, but because they end up just doing nothing this year.

3 comments:

This is what the Democrats get for relying narrowly on low-skilled low-income low-education voters, minority voters, and young voters indoctrinated by left-leaning "schools" and left-leaning Hollywood. Democrats' narrow appeals to the lowest common denominator (entitlements to government benefits and favoritism paid for by others) was always bound to run into failure.

As Margaret Thatcher prophesied, "The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY". The Democrats' agenda is all socialism all the time. No wonder honest working Americans reject the Democrats in large numbers. And only the highly partisan (and taxpayer-funded) get out the Democrat vote efforts (ACORN, Rock the Vote, Union thugs) can possibly thwart the will of the American people.

The will of the American people is overwhelmingly center-right. And as long as the Democrats demean the majority of America and hold Americans in contempt for rejecting their far-left agenda, Democrats will never regain the trust of the American people.